When we released Collabora Online 22.05, it marked a major step forward – a new design, LanguageTool integration, and a performance boost across the board. Since then, we’ve delivered new major releases: 23.05, 24.04 and 25.04 each bringing hundreds of improvements and a refreshed user experience.
But the story didn’t end for 22.05 when 23.05 dropped. New features grab the headlines, but behind every major release, there’s another kind of progress – the quiet, continuous work that keeps earlier versions running smoothly for those who depend on them.
From the day 22.05 was released until support for it ended this year, our developers merged more than 4,200 commits into the 22.05 branch – 2,427 in Collabora Online and 1,822 in the LibreOffice core. That quiet, ongoing work – thousands of fixes and backports – ensured 22.05 remained a safe, supported, and reliable foundation long after newer versions arrived.
Why long-term support matters
Not every user wants or can upgrade immediately.
Enterprise deployments – especially in education, government, or large organisations – need predictability and validation cycles. We get that. That’s why we don’t force upgrades. Instead, we continue maintaining earlier releases, giving our partners the freedom to choose when and how they move forward.
Our long-term support ensures:
- Regular security and CVE patches
- Continuous bug fixes and backports
- Compatibility with integrations and file formats
- Ongoing translation and localisation improvements
(around 400 translation-related commits just on the Online side)
The maintenance in numbers
Across all maintenance updates for 22.05, the commits tell a story of relentless care:
- 2,427 commits in Collabora Online
- 1,822 commits in Collabora Office core
A rough keyword analysis of the commits paints a picture of where that effort went:
- Calc: 153 commits improving reliability and formula behaviour
- Writer: 57 commits for text layout, comments, and track changes
- Draw & Impress: 100 commits combined improving visuals and compatibility
- Browser & UI: 499 commits improving web interface consistency and usability
- PDF export: 90 commits for fidelity and standards compliance
- Security & SSL: 59 commits ensuring safe operation and encryption
- Mobile and tablet: 236 commits keeping the mobile experience modern
- Accessibility (A11y): 12 commits improving inclusivity for all users
From Calc and Writer improvements to browser-side stability and mobile enhancements, all this work meant that even as new features arrived in newer versions, 22.05 stayed solid, secure, and production-ready for organisations that needed continuity.
Stability and security without compromise
Much of this maintenance work focused on long-term reliability – patching vulnerabilities, tightening SSL and access control, improving clipboard and document security handling, and ensuring Collabora Online stayed safe for users in even the most regulated environments.
As an open-source project Collabora Online has made every one of these fixes transparent – visible to partners and the wider community. Additionally, because we build on LibreOffice, these backports further served not only our own product but the broader ecosystem too.
This openness also makes maintenance a collaboration. Bug reports and performance feedback from real deployments feed directly into our workflow, helping us prioritise what matters most to users in production. Whether it’s a government cloud platform or a school system running a private deployment, those insights turn into patches that keep everyone’s environment robust and secure.
Upgrading on your timeline
By supporting multiple versions in parallel, we give our partners freedom – to plan upgrades on their schedule, not ours. This helps manage inter-connected pieces that need to integrate and be qualified with a certain version of Collabora Online, for a smooth and reliable upgrade experience. That’s what open collaboration looks like – choice, trust, and shared improvement.
A foundation you can rely on
New releases like 23.05, 24.04 or 25.04 show the future of Collabora Online, but the recently ended 22.05 story proves something just as important – our commitment to the present.
We’re pleased to have done all of the hard work necessary, far from the glamour of the cutting edge, to keep our partners & users safe, their systems available and their documents working. You can rely on Collabora’s subscription for dependable long-term support.
